Environmental-protection shoe sole made of complete recycled shoes

ABSTRACT

An environmental-protection shoe sole made of complete recycled shoes is provided, which uses recycled used shoes as a primary constituent of the raw material thereof, which used shoes, after being processed to remove metal accessories mounted inside and outside the shoes, are subjected to shredding pulverization by a shredding pulverization machine and are then subjected to application steam for high temperature heating for deodorization and drying to form tiny pieces of recycled raw material, which can be used as a raw material for making shoe soles. This raw material is further mixed with a base rubber and a suitable amount of curing additives, activation prompting agents, and filling agents to form a moldable shoe sole raw material, which is put into a mold and heated and pressurized for curing and shaping, so as to realize total recycling of complete used shoes for pollution-free manufacturing of shoe soles.

This is a continuation-in-part of co-pending patent application Ser. No.11/968,662, filed Jan. 3, 2008.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

(a) Technical Field of the Invention

The present invention provides an environmental-protection shoe solemade of complete recycled shoes, which allows for collection andrecycling of discarded shoes simultaneous with the sales of new shoes,and wherein the collected recycled shoes, with metal accessoriesattached to the shoes being removed first, are directly disposed in ashredding pulverization machine for pulverization processing of allmaterials of the shoes to form a particle like raw material of asuitable size and being automatically and uniformly mixed, followed bysteam deodorization and drying to be further mixed a base rubber andadded with curing additives and activation prompting agents, andsubjected to mechanical and uniform mixing and stirring to provide a rawmaterial having desired properties, so that the recycled shoes can becompletely reused to realize pollution-free manufacturing of shoe solefor ensuring an environmentally-conservative and cycled use.

(b) Description of the Prior Art

The natural resources of the Earth are limited and regeneration of isgenerally difficult. It is now a major challenge of the modem humansociety to recycle and reuse of the wastes in order to slow down theconsumption of natural resources and lower down manufacturing costs ofindustrial production. In the production chain of shoes, a huge amountof natural rubber is consumed and is completely obtained from plants. Itis an important idea that the consumption and the sales can be made in areversed proportion as a result of environmental protection recyclingprocess. This makes the natural resources and materials to be cyclicallyand repeatedly regenerated and re-used to directly reduce theconsumption of energy and material. The Earth can be benefitted fromthis for recovery, so that protection of the Earth can be realized. Itis thus desired to have an arrangement that offers such a control overthe production and sales of merchandises and after-use processing as toform a series of cycled producing-consuming chain. Namely, it isintended to collect and recycle used shoes at the same time when newshoes are sold so as to form a cycled arrangement of production forcomplete environmental conservation. For recycle of a complete shoe,since the materials or parts used in making a shoe include a variety oftypes of parts including fabric, metal accessories, plastics, and evenmetal plates, the processing is complicated and difficult, leading toextremely high costs for processing, so that it is generally notpossible heretofore to process a complete shoe. The present inventionprovides processing of complete shoe, which allows for efficient andcomplete pulverization of the used shoes to make a raw material that canbe used to mixed with other constituents for making shoe sole so as toovercome the trouble of processing used shoes and also reduce theproduction cost of raw material to offer an environmental-protection andeconomic efficacy. From the viewpoint of environmental protection chainfor making shoe sole, this design of the present invention forenvironmental protection and providing shoe sole material caneffectively reuse the recycled used shoes by converting the used shoesinto a raw material for making new shoes. The advantages in respect ofenvironmental protection and reduction of production cost of shoes aretruly of long term value for environmental protection and developmentand also offer economic values that are worth development and research.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In view of the drawbacks of high costs and complicated processing forthe manufacturing and use of the currently availableenvironmental-protection shoe soles, the present invention aims toprovide an environmental-protection shoe sole raw material made ofcomplete recycled shoes, where the discarded shoes are collected andrecycled and metal accessories are removed, and then shreddingpulverization is performed on the collected discarded shoes, followed byhigh temperature deodorization and drying for being mixed with asuitable amount of base rubber and other constituents includingadditives for uniformly stirring and depositing in a mold for curing andmolding in high temperature and high pressure to form anenvironmental-protection shoe sole having desired properties. Thiseffectively improves the impractical situation of the existing shoesoles that are made with high costs and are not environmentallyfriendly.

An objective of the present invention is to provide a shoe sole madethrough recycling and reuse of complete discarded shoes, where thecomplete discarded shoes, after being processed to remove metalaccessories from the shoes, are subjected to shredding pulverization tohave the complete shoes pulverized to form tiny pieces of a suitablesize that are totally mixed together, followed by application of wateror steam for deodorization and drying for being mixed with a suitableamount of base rubber to form a shoe sole raw material for molding shoesole, so that the manufacturing of shoe sole meets the needs forenvironmental protection and of economic values.

The foregoing object and summary provide only a brief introduction tothe present invention. To fully appreciate these and other objects ofthe present invention as well as the invention itself, all of which willbecome apparent to those skilled in the art, the following detaileddescription of the invention and the claims should be read inconjunction with the accompanying drawings. Throughout the specificationand drawings identical reference numerals refer to identical or similarparts.

Many other advantages and features of the present invention will becomemanifest to those versed in the art upon making reference to thedetailed description and the accompanying sheets of drawings in which apreferred structural embodiment incorporating the principles of thepresent invention is shown by way of illustrative example.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 shows a flow chart of a manufacturing processed used to make anenvironmental-protection shoe sole made of recycled shoes.

FIG. 2 is schematic view illustrating shredding pulverization used inthe present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

The following descriptions are of exemplary embodiments only, and arenot intended to limit the scope, applicability or configuration of theinvention in any way. Rather, the following description provides aconvenient illustration for implementing exemplary embodiments of theinvention. Various changes to the described embodiments may be made inthe function and arrangement of the elements described without departingfrom the scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.

The present invention provides an environmental-protection shoe solemade of complete recycled shoes. The complete development of theenvironmental-protection shoe sole is generally a design for full shoerecycling of discarded shoes and a brief description will be given withreference to FIG. 1. The manufacturing of raw material (10) for theenvironmental-protection shoe sole, which features full shoe recycling,is performed by using recycled used and discarded complete shoes (11) asa main body of recycling, including general broken and discarded sportsshoes, leather shoes, work shoes, and informal footwear, which can beany type of broken and discarded shoes, and both indoor and outdoorshoes can be recycled and used in the present invention. These recycledshoes comprise various shoes that are made of a combination of varioussubstances, including EVA, PVC, TPR, and wooden heels. These recycledshoes do not need to be subjected to classification or other specificprocessing and only the metal accessories that are attached to therecycled shoes (11) need to be first subjected to a detaching/removingprocess (12) by employing a removing/cutting die. Namely, large-sizedmetal parts that are attached outside the shoes (11) are cut off andseparated by using a proper machine that operates the die for recycling,so that the rigid metal parts will not cause damage to cutting dies inthe subsequent processing and continuous processing can be carried outin a safe manner. The recycled shoes (11) from which a major portion andlarge-sized metal parts are removed are collected and disposed in ashredder machine (30), which is composed generally of a material hopper(31) of which the bottom is coupled to a feeding tank (32) inside whicha parallel arrangement of two rotating helical cutters (33) is provided,as shown in FIG. 2. The two rotating helical cutters (33) are rotated athigh speeds with various speed ratios, generally reaching a rotationspeed of 600 rpm with a speed ratio of approximately 1:2.4. The completerecycled shoes (20) are disposed into the material hopper (31) and aresubjected to shredding pulverization processing (13) by means of thespeed difference of the helical cutters (33). Due to the rotating curvesof the helical cutters, a complete recycled shoe (20), once disposedinto the machine, is subjected to dual-direction shredding by variousrotation to realize a result of fragmentation resembling explosion. Theshredded parts are then subjected to compression and rotating shreddinginside the feeding tank (32) that is of a desired length, so as to bebroken into tiny pieces or powders of a particle size around 5 mmF , nolimitation to the shape being required. Since the recycled shoes (20)contains fabrics, EVA, PVC, TPR or other special wooden materials, thesevarious materials, when subjected to shredding pulverization, can besimultaneously and uniformly mixed, helping improving the phenomenon offorming plastic blocks and stretching caused by heat generated in highspeed shredding plastic substances. In case that the recycled shoescontain a large amount of special thermoplastic materials, water streamsor mists may be applied at the time when shredding pulverization isperformed to achieve a desired effect of cooling and also to provide anadditional effect of help rinsing and cleaning the parts, so that thematerial pieces formed by the shredding pulverization can be of desiredshape of tiny particles or powders. Theses pulverized tiny pieces arethen fed through a nearly enclosed tunnel-like conveying device and aresubjected to high-temperature deodorization processing (14) by applyinghigh temperature steam of 120° C., so that the recycled and pulverizedshoes are so processed to be relatively cleaned and free of odors andare additionally rinsing and cleaning when subjected to wetting andevaporation of water droplets in passing through the high temperaturesteam. Then, drying (15) through supplying of hot air from a hot airblower and timely expelling the hot air so supplied is taken to cleanthe pulverized, well-mixed environmental-protection shoe sole rawmaterial (10) to such an extent that they are free of odor and smell.

To be used to manufacture shoe soles, the shoe sole raw material (10)that is made of the recycled shoes (11) is prepared with a suitablepercentage of weight, which is generally between 5-90%, for mixing with,depending on the physical properties desired for the shoe sole to bemade, a base rubber (20) that is formed by mixing together naturalrubber, artificial rubber additives, filling agents, which takes a ratioof 5-90%, and is disposed in a material tank of a mixer for stirring andmixing (21) to meet the desired requirements of uniform mixture throughapplication of multiple times of mixing in a given period of time,wherein the mixture ratio is modified in accordance with the desiredproperty of the shoe sole so made, by timely adding, among a totalamount, 5-10% additives, including bridging agents, prompting agents,activating agents, aging-preventing agents, and processing facilitatingagents, in order to facilitate plate pressing (22) carried out by aplanar rolling machine to thereby form a plate-like material for moldingshoe soles. With proper addition of the additives, the plate-likematerial can be rolled and forms a roll of raw material sheet tofacilitate subsequent trimming and storage. The thickness of the sheetis not greater than 50 mm, and can be varied in accordance with theactual applications.

In making a shoe sole by molding, the mixed and rolled material sheet iscut to a desired size and is then positioned in a molding device formolding processing (23), which is subjected to pressurization andheating by a hydraulic machine for curing and shaping (24) therebyforming a complete, desired shape of the shoe sole. The shoe sole rawmaterial in accordance with the present invention has been tested andinspected for at least a sample, in which the mixed,environmental-protection, recycled raw material (10) takes a percentageof 50% of the material that makes the product of shoe sole, theremaining composition being the additionally incorporated base rubber(20) in the percentage of around 45%, together with additives, such assulfur for facilitating curing of rubber, and rubber curing promptingagents, which together take a percentage of approximately 5% and, afterbeing mixed at a suitable ratio, is directly used for mixing with theraw material and uniformly stirred (21) for being further subjected toplate pressing processing (22) to form a roll of sheet material thatfacilitates stacking and winding for subsequent molding and/or cuttingoperation. Sheets of suitable size of the raw material (10) is disposed,in a quantitative manner, in the mold for molding processing (23) byclamping together upper and lower mold members to thereby allow forproceeding of heating and pressurizing for curing and shaping processing(24). With the assistance for curing provided by the sulfur additivesand the activation caused by the curing prompting agents that are mixedin the raw material (10), the flowability of the raw material can besignificantly enhanced to completely fill the internal volume of a moldcavity to complete the shaping of a shoe sole. The temperature ofheating for general shoe soles is around 100-160° C. and the time periodfor molding is approximately 4-15 minutes. As to the mixing ratios ofthe compositions of the raw material, in accordance with the desiredproperties of the actually made shoe sole, the mixing ratio of rawmaterial can be made different. A semi-finished product of the moldingoperation, after being removed from the mold, is subjected to a trimmingoperation to provide a trimmed and neat edge of the molded shoe sole. Assuch, an environmental-protection shoe sole product (25) made ofcomplete recycled shoes is thus completed.

The environmental-protection shoe sole is primarily made of a materialobtained from complete recycled shoes, wherein both indoor shoes oroutdoor shoes can be simply recycled and used, and wherein, depending onthe requirement of recycling processing, the rotational speeds of thehelical cutters (33) used in the shredding pulverization (13) can beadjusted and water mist can be timely sprayed for cooling and cleaningin order to realize simple pulverization of complete shoe and uniformmixing, so that the degree of fragmentation or pulverization anduniformity of recycled raw material (10) can be better fit to practicalneeds. Through modification of the mixing ratio of the raw material withthe base rubber (20) and further through adding filling agents andadditional processing for contact enhancing, namely further mixing theraw material (10) with 5-10% filling agent, such as the substances ofKaolin, calcium carbonate, and glass powder, of which the ratios can bemodified by adjustment of the amounts added in accordance with therequirements for hardness, reinforcement of properties in associationwith wear-resistance and being rigid can be realized, making the shoesole more practical. This is similar to the manufacturing of theexisting shoe sole and is not the novel part of the present invention,so that no further detail is needed herein. The features of the presentinvention are that the environmental-protection raw material (10) ismade of a primary constituent component obtained from complete recycledused shoes, which, with only the metal accessories removed from theshoes, can be disposed in a shredder pulverization machine forpulverization (13), leading to the effectiveness of saving labor andsimplifying the operation of the manufacturing process and furtherrealizing environmental conservation by recycling and re-using discardedshoes. The whole process adds only minor extra costs and processingsteps and continuous production with a manufacturing line can berealized for the manufacturing thereof, whereby the effectiveness ofenvironmental-protection recycling, simplification, practicability canbe achieved and importantly, the troublesome process that theconventional shoe recycling can only process the sole portion of theshoes and requires classifications of shoe parts is overcome. Throughthe full shoe recycling according to the present invention, in themanufacturing of shoe sole, the present invention is advantageous insaving labor with a practical and economic structure, and achieves realenvironmental protection for sustainable recycling and reusing andcomplete regeneration.

In the above manufacturing of the environmental-protection shoe soleaccording to the present invention, the raw material (10) is obtainedfrom arbitrary shoes that are discarded and recycled, together with asuitable amount of base rubber (20) mixed together to provide thedesired properties, so that the discarded shoes can be completelyrecycled for re-use through being shredded and pulverized therebyensuring an environmental-protection raw material that can be cyclicallyand repeated regenerated. Thus, the whole manufacturing process of theshoe sole is completely done with environmentally conservative andpollution-free material, which is selectively combined with suitableamounts of curing additives and flowability prompting agents. Suchadditives are of minor amounts and are generally volatile substance inthe curing process so that they are completely of no influence on theafter-discarding recycling and processing of the shoe sole. The wholemanufacturing process can be done in a continuously producing manner,requiring no particular processing technology, and can be planned andcontrolled with automatic manufacturing lines so that the manufacturingis automatized and continuous, and there is no needed to domanufacturing in segmentized process with additional interconnectiontherebetween. That is to say that the present invention provides acombination and design of shoe sole material that is of extreme novelty.A conservative estimation indicates that the overall manufacturing costis reduced at least 15% as compared to conventional manufacturing ofshoe sole. According to the present invention, discarded shoe recyclingis made linking with shoe sales, making it an effective means forenvironmental protection and also eliminating the problem ofcontamination and troubles of recycling for the discarded wastes. Thepresent invention provides a design for manufacturing, in a novel way,of environmental-protection shoe sole, which is of great economic valuesand offers a true value that is beyond comparison by the currentlyexisting environmental protection shoe soles.

In summary, the present invention offers an environmental protectionshoe sole that is made of complete recycled shoes by using the recycledshoes in an intact manner for shredding pulverization and mixing forsubsequent processing, together with a suitable amount of base rubber,followed by adjustment and shaping, to thereby allow the shoe sole to beunlimitedly recycled and reused with the least amount of material lost,and actually providing the features of use of environmental protectionsubstances. In the respect of material development and design, thepresent invention offers the advantages of reduction of manufacturingcosts, simplification of manufacturing process, and enhancement ofpractical value.

It will be understood that each of the elements described above, or twoor more together may also find a useful application in other types ofmethods differing from the type described above.

While certain novel features of this invention have been shown anddescribed and are pointed out in the annexed claim, it is not intendedto be limited to the details above, since it will be understood thatvarious omissions, modifications, substitutions and changes in the formsand details of the device illustrated and in its operation can be madeby those skilled in the art without departing in any way from the spiritof the present invention.

1. An environmental-protection shoe sole made of complete recycledshoes, the shoe sole being manufactured by steps of mixing and stirringraw materials, molding and shaping, and trimming, characterized in thatthe raw material is comprised of a primary constituent of recycledshoes, which, after being subjected to removal of metal accessories, isdisposed in a shredding pulverization machine for pulverization so thatall shaped parts of complete shoes are pulverized and subjected tosufficient stirring through helical means to for tiny pieces of a sizeof 5 mmF, followed by deodorization and drying through high temperaturesteam and hot air cleaning and eliminating odors of the recycled shoesto thereby realize full shoe recycling for processing to form pulverizedand uniformly-mixed environmental-protection shoe sole raw material. 2.The environmental-protection shoe sole made of complete recycled shoesaccording to claim 1, wherein the high temperature deodorizationcomprises feeding the material into an enclosed tunnel-like conveyingdevice and subjecting the material to high temperature steamdeodorization at a temperature approximately or above 120° C.
 3. Theenvironmental-protection shoe sole made of complete recycled shoesaccording to claim 1, wherein the shredding pulverization is performedthrough an arrangement comprising a material hopper having a bottomcoupled to a feeding tank inside which parallel arranged rotatinghelical cutters are provided for rotating in different direction at highspeeds for shredding the recycled shoes for pulverization as broken tinypieces.
 4. The environmental-protection shoe sole made of completerecycled shoes according to claim 3, wherein the helical cutters arearranged in parallel and are rotatable at different high speeds.
 5. Theenvironmental-protection shoe sole made of complete recycled shoesaccording to claim 3, wherein the parallel arranged helical cutters arerotated at speeds of which a ratio is 1:2.4.
 6. Theenvironmental-protection shoe sole made of complete recycled shoesaccording to claim 4, wherein the parallel arranged helical cutters arerotated at speeds of which a ratio is 1:2.4.
 7. Theenvironmental-protection shoe sole made of complete recycled shoesaccording claim 1, wherein the pulverized recycled shoes take an amountof 5-90% of the shoe sole raw material.
 8. An environmental-protectionshoe sole made of complete recycled shoes, the shoe sole beingmanufactured by mixing and stirring raw materials, molding and shaping,and trimming, characterized in that recycled shoes are used as a rawmaterial, which takes an amount of 5-90% of shoe sole material and isfurther mixed with a suitable amount of a base rubber in an amount of5-90% and further added with suitable amounts of 5-10% of additives,followed by mechanically and uniformly mixed and stirred, processed by aplanar rolling device to be rolled to form sheet-likeenvironmental-protection shoe sole material for being ready to cut andpositioned in a mold for molding by being heating and pressurized forcuring and shaping to thereby form a shoe sole ofenvironmental-protection material.
 9. The environmental-protection shoesole made of complete recycled shoes according to claim 8, wherein thesheet-like shoe sole material that is formed by mixing and stirring theraw material obtained from pulverization of recycled shoes is of athickness of 1-50 mm.
 10. The environmental-protection shoe sole made ofcomplete recycled shoes according to claim 1, wherein in mixing andstirring of the shoe sole sheet material, the material is added withfilling agents including Kaolin, calcium carbonate, and glass powder tooffer rigid properties of the sheet material.
 11. Theenvironmental-protection shoe sole made of complete recycled shoesaccording to claim 10, wherein the filling agents are of an amount of5-10% of the stirred material.